Serenity Prayer - How it Came to Be

The Serenity Prayer has become an international favorite for people in distress in the last 60 years.  The modern form had a humble beginning, but the basic idea has been around for centuries.  Probably since civilization began, people have been stymied by this problem:  we all face situations that are painful, yet seem unresolvable.  Mother Goose gets credit for putting a solution in verse back in 1695:

For every ailment under the sun

There is a remedy, or there is none;

If there be one, try to find it;

If there be none, never mind it.

This simple advice had been printed in books for centuries.  Then in 1943, America was bogged down in World War II.  Reinhold Niebuhr was a liberal German-American pastor.  Despite his best efforts to stop it, the Nazis had taken over the country of his ancestors, and his own country was forced to fight them in all-out war.  His feelings of helplessness over the situation led him to offer up this corporate prayer as part of a Sunday worship service:

God, give us grace

to accept with serenity

the things that cannot be changed,

courage to change the things

that should be changed,

and the wisdom to distinguish

the one from the other.

Another clergyman suggested that the prayer might be inspirational to soldiers in harm’s way, so it was printed in a manual for army chaplains to use.  As soldiers returned from the war, many found their way into a relatively new organization called Alcoholics Anonymous.  AA gained permission to use this prayer, and simplified it into its present form:

God, grant me 

the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

the courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference.

By removing the word “grace” and changing it from the plural “us” to the singular “me”, the prayer was no longer limited to Christian worship.  It could be used by anyone individually, regardless of the person’s religion or concept of God.  From AA, it has spread to all Twelve-Step Programs, and that way to friends of Twelve-Steppers.